Vim Fuego This album has the sickest artwork ever, bar none. The picture of two grizzled old men, decapitated and kissing is the perfect preparation for the audio filth contained within. ‘Been Caught Buttering’ is pure musical perversion of the vilest kind, repulsive and degrading, or porn for deviants, depending on your point of view. Everything on this album is distorted, from the instruments to the band’s view of the world. Guitar, bass and drums merge in a morass of visceral death metal sludge, thick and almost impenetrable. There are two gears on this album- high speed, almost tune-free jackhammering, or a mid-paced grooving grind. Schrenk occasionally pulls some odd, fucked up noises from his guitar in the place of solos, and Wank (a very common surname in Austria, in case you were wondering) sometimes hits an extra drum or two, which is about as close at the band ever gets to embellishing their music. This is all about the vocals though. Schrenk gargles and groans his way through the deliciously revolting lyrics. How revolting? Well, “Shrunken and Mummified Bitch” is about, well, shrinking and mummifying a prostitute. “Splatterday Night Fever” graphically explores the putrescent consequences of casual sex. Elsewhere, there’s rebirth by crawling through your mother’s entrails, mass murder both sick and sexual, cannibalism, and hideous deformity. Most comic of everything on offer is ‘Sputter Supper’. Wank’s wife butchers a different neighbour for his supper every evening, including the annoying kid upstairs, and next on the menu is the new janitor. ‘Been Caught Buttering’ is a good old fashioned old school piece of Death Metal obscenity. It has no socially redeeming features, zero melody, is rough as fuck, and in places, it reeks of rancid dickcheese. It couldn’t be much better.

UMUR "Been Caught Buttering" is the 2nd full-length studio album by Austrian death metal trio Pungent Stench. The album was released through Nuclear Blast Records in October 1991. While "For God Your Soul... For Me Your Flesh (1990)" earned the band some success, "Been Caught Buttering" really put their name on the European death metal map. The album even spawned promotional music videos for the tracks "Shrunken and Mummified Bitch" and "Sick Bizarre Defaced Creation". It should be noted that the 2001 re-issue features two bonus tracks titled "Daddy Cruel" and "The Ballad of Mangled Homeboys".

The simple and filthy death metal style (with the occasional deathgrinding part) of the debut album is continued on "Been Caught Buttering", but with an added groove element (and even the odd funky slapbass part in "Sick Bizarre Defaced Creation"). In fact there are parts on the album that smell like death´n´roll a couple of years before that style was made popular by the likes of Entombed and Gorefest. The perverted blood´n´gore themes are in a similar style as the ones on the debut album albeit with an even more sick humourous twist. Tracks like "Sputter Supper" and especially the album highlight "Splatterday Night Fever" feature moments that are absolutely hilarious if you are able to appreciate the deranged humour. Sometimes the music is a bit too simple and formulaic, but "Been Caught Buttering" is overall a greatly entertaining release.

The music is delivered with a nice organic touch by the trio (there´s an almost filthy punked attitude about it) and the raw sound production is also something that suits the music well. The guitar is distorted to a point where it´s not always obvious what is being played (noisy buzzaw style), but somehow that´s not a serious distraction. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.